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Maomao had learned early on in her life to avoid men.

There were plenty of reasons to do so. In the Pleasure District, there were many unsavory people who were turned away from the brothels and were looking to take out their resentment on anyone who might cross their path. Kidnappers were also a common concern. As was that one specific old man that came around the Verdigris Palace, who Maomao’s sisters hid her away from.

The incident that cemented this lesson most firmly in her mind was from early on in her childhood, and had nothing to do with the three situations described above.

She didn’t remember much of it. Just the man lying near the front of her old man’s house. He didn’t look inebriated, she recalled that much. Just tired. When she had gone to check on him, he had wrapped his hand around her forearm.

It hadn’t been a tight grip, nor had it lasted for more than a second at most. But when she reeled back, her skin was splitting in front of her eyes. With no apparent cause, a gash opened up on her forearm, a vertical slice going from just below the wrist and nearly up to the elbow, with the skin peeling back in some areas to make the edges jagged.

Maomao remembered stumbling backwards and crying out – a rarity even back then. She remembered her father coming to her rescue and shouting at the man. She remembered the man’s eyes when he glanced at her one last time, then never again.

They were strange eyes. A color that she couldn’t quite parse. Swimming in the light almost. She wondered what could cause that. She almost wished she got the chance to dissect them. Too late for that, she never saw the man again.

Her father helped her wrap her arm in bandages. No ointment helped speed up the wound’s healing, and she found that no pain relief was needed. For as monstrous of a cut it was, it didn’t hurt at all. But that didn’t mean infection or further complications were off the table. Even if all other sensation and movement was maintained, the lack of pain in the area could still point towards nerve damage.

Minor concerns, in the face of the changes that followed after.

All this was a long time back. Maomao had learned to manage it by now. Even back in the Rear Palace, cut off from all her usual supplies, she was able to source some sparse herbs to chew on and restrain herself.

But trouble was following them at every step. Concubine Lihua had fallen desperately ill from the lead in the face powders.

Maomao could console herself with the thought that she had done her due diligence by warning her off in the beginning, only for it to go unheeded. But that didn’t stop the sting of sympathy when she heard of the concubine’s plight.

She was an apothecary. It was her duty to look out for the ill. When Jinshi sent her to care for her, she would do her level best to nurse the woman back to health.

Concubine Lihua was barely more than a corpse. Hanging on by willpower alone, though how much of that she had left was unclear. The ladies-in-waiting were of no help. In fact, they were making her condition worse. Whether it was malice or pure incompetency, Maomao had yet to discern.

Given weeks of rest, lots of water, simple food, the chance to sweat, airing out the room of all the incense, and Maomao might be able to help her recover naturally. But it would be touch-and-go. Require a lot of careful work and resilience. Instead she could just…

“Everyone get out,” she commanded. “Clear the room. I need to examine her alone.”

The ladies-in-waiting were clearly doubtful, but now that Maomao had uncovered the depths of this mishandling, she was not inclined to give them patience or mercy. They scattered, and she had the room to herself.

Concubine Lihua was quiet. Barely breathing, let alone responsive. Maomao put a hand on her arm, just to see if the woman would do anything. A flicker of her eyelids, nothing more.

Who knew if she could last that long? Who knew how far the damage had spread under her skin?

Maomao carefully rolled back the woman’s sleeve. Picked a point on her upper arm. Brought her face close and bit down.

She was in such a state that her body only gave the barest of flinches. Maomao kept a hand over the woman’s wrist as she held the bite. Waiting for the pulse to strengthen until she pulled off her.

The bite mark was quickly scabbing over and speeding through the healing process. The skin around it had turned a healthier color from the deathly white. It would take more than this to bring her back to full health. A consistent diet of simple food. Plenty of rest. An increased number of baths wouldn’t be amiss, nor would some steaming. But the hardest part was over with. Maomao could ensure that much.

Upon being taken to Jinshi’s mansion in the Outer Court, she hadn’t been able to bring along more fitting ingredients from her father’s stash, but she hoped that Jinshi would have no problem approving this small list of ingredients. He owed her, after all, for making her solve all the riddles that he brought her.

Gaoshun looked over the list she had presented him, eyes roving down each item. “Even I can tell that some of these are rather commonplace poisons.”

Yes, that was the point.

“Commonplace means that they aren’t actually potent!” Maomao defended. “And the toxins will be removed during the preparation,” too strong-willed, she should tone it down, “Of course, it is entirely up to you and Jinshi-sama if you wish to approve my request.”

“Ah… I have a feeling it’ll be found acceptable,” Gaoshun was clearly sweating as he backed away.

Maomao hadn’t been lying. A lot of the best medicines came from plants that could be greatly harmful if taken in the wrong dose by the wrong person. And of course, it depended on where the root or the leaf of the plant was ingested, and if it had been boiled or not, and what it was mixed with. Factors upon factors could change the nature of a substace.

She sliced thin pieces of mandrake root, then grated one into even finer shreds over the small pot she was stewing her latest concoction in. This was sure to alleviate any of the toxic effects, and mixed with sweetgrass and willow bark, it would work well to help with headaches.

A bubble in the brew popped, and hot liquid splashed onto her arm, a small burn left in its wake. Maomoa hissed and reached for the sliced mandrake root. She popped one into her mouth, chewing carefully. The angry red mark faded out before a welt could even grow.

There was a thin line between poison and medicine. And Maomao had a unique constitution that allowed her to push that line further than most people reasonably should.

She had once unearthed a book from her father’s collection of medical journals. One chapter of it described certain anomalies found in mankind. People who pushed the boundaries to the point that they might not even be considered people anymore.

Togabito , it had labeled such individuals. The Offenders.

Maomao thought on it often. Wondered if her father had pieced together that she was likely one such specimen. If he thought it was better for her to not know, or if he simply didn’t think it mattered.

Even if she hadn’t known how dire the consequences were, she would have still kept her head down and avoided troublesome occurrences. She wasn’t the type to go mad with power unrighteously gained. The most she did with it was run experiments on herself.

It was the same way her old man had promised her to not touch a corpse. She was never to go further than raising a hand against an enemy. Who knew if she could stop after taking that first step?

A reasonable idea in normal circumstances.

These were not normal circumstances.

She stared down the guard blocking her path to the door, “Just let me through, someone’s life is on the line here!”

The guard hefted his club up, barely entertaining her words. “Run along now, servant girl, you’re not authorized to even be on these steps.”

It was like they couldn’t even hear her. Normally, being invisible was what suited her best, but she was an apothecary. If someone’s life could be saved by her intervention, she was going to do her best in making that happen.

She gritted her teeth, the faint remnants of mandrake root’s sickly sweet taste coating the inside of her mouth. “Or are you complicit? Is that why you don’t want a warning being issued? You don’t look at all worried about the idea of the official inside being killed-”

The club came swinging at her, too fast for her to dodge or even soften the blow. That was okay. She was trying to provoke him. She had to have some reason to-

Stumbling on the stairs, struggling to not fall backwards, she heaved. Spat a blood-stained globule on the man’s shoe. A little disgusting, and not half as effective as it would be if it was bare skin, but it would do the trick. Give it a couple minutes, and it would do the trick.

Would she have the time to spare?

Maomao pulled herself to her feet, forcing her eyes to focus on the man who attacked her, now being held back by other guards in his outrage.

“Then you can blame any consequences on me, if you’re worried about being caught up in this,” she maintained, her plea hoarse and words most likely slurred. She coughed forcefully. “You don’t have to- lift a finger-”

The man coughed sympathetically, and fell slack against the guards restraining man. Not a moment later, they hurriedly dropped him. Red pustules on the man’s chin were making themselves known. Everyone gathered there broke out into fearful speculations of illness and contagions.

In the chaos, Maomao took her moment and ran .

The distraction didn’t last long. She heard other guards give chase. But they were all wearing heavy armor, and she was being propelled forward by the knowledge that someone could die if she allowed herself to be caught here.

She found the official standing under the pillar. She heard wood creak and rope snap. She didn’t think twice of diving forward and sweeping the official off from his execution platform. Even if she only remembered bleary fragments about what happened after and who was present for it.

Jinshi was there, for some curious reason. As was… that man from her past.

Not the one with the strange eyes. The other one. The creep she hated most of all.

“We were able to remove all the splinters from your leg, but full function will take nearly a month to recover,” the physician told her. He was already far more qualified than the quack they kept in the Rear Palace. Maomao nodded in understanding, feeling out the bandages wrapped around her shin. “Some ointment has been prescribed to your arm, but I’m afraid we were unable to make much progress on its healing. There’s no wood to be found in there, at least.”

Once more, she inclined her head. “I’m not concerned. Surely it will recover quickly.”

Well, all of it aside from the gash on her arm she had tentatively started calling a scar. It had been there for more than a decade, and yet looked as raw and fresh as if she had received it mere hours ago.

Upon her return to Jinshi’s mansion, he interrupted her while she was working her way through a bushel of aconite berries.

He slapped it out of her hand, outraged. “I can’t believe you’re indulging in your- your poison fascination with those heavy injuries!”

“I feel much better, though!” she argued around the berries she had shoved into her cheek when she realized what he was going to do.

Once the panic and fear had subsided, she realized that she should have just kept her mouth shut. Figured out some other way. Not indulged in rash impulses.

Word would get around about the mysterious illness that had struck the guard that stopped her. It wasn’t anything terminal, despite its jarring appearance with the pock marks. She had coughed on him viciously before it happened, so surely someone would pose the idea that she had poisoned him somehow, even if they didn’t make the jump on how exactly.

According to what she had gleaned from Lihaku’s gossip, the assumption was that the man had been concealing a grievous disease. And that Maomao had begun coughing due to close contact with him and having a weaker constitution than the guards he was otherwise surrounded by.

She would be offended if it wasn’t the perfect smokescreen.

But if the gossip was hot enough… word would eventually reach the exact wrong ears.

Preparing for that eventuality was impossible. She had nothing to combat them with except words.

“The Supervisor was very impressed with the usage of your abilities,” a man noted, sitting at her windowsill in the dead of night.

At least he didn’t make a whole scene of this. Maomao met him with the same stony expression the man himself had. “Natsumi. Your presence here is highly unwelcome.”

“I don’t quite care about your opinions. Just passing along the Supervisor’s thoughts,” he stuck his nose in the air. He had quite the air of superiority for being what amounted to a lapdog for a mad scientist. “Subtlety is key. Not many of us togabito get to slip under the radar like that. You should have more pride in what you can get away with.”

“I can get away with it due to not having a track record for suspicious happenings,” Maomao maintained. Why was she letting herself be baited into a conversation like this? It wasn’t like this man had particularly interesting observations to make. Nor could she allow herself to speak freely in his presence, for all he acted like they were in some sort of club.

“Ah, fair, fair,” he nodded, tilting his head to look at the rest of the room. Particularly his gaze lingered on the preserved herbs on her desk. “This supposed to be your… lab? How lacking.”

Here they went.

“Now at Shiki, we’re becoming a bonafide scientific club,” Natsumi shared. “Isou – you’ve probably caught wind of his exploits, he’s very infamous as the Immortal Doctor – has taken to the extensive resources we can provide him to push the boundaries of medical science. Imagine; organisms smaller than we can perceive which cause our diseases, highly weakened and injected into the bloodstream to bolster immunity against the disease’s full form.”

Maomao licked her lips. That did sound tempting.

But no. Never. She’d been invited early in her childhood to look at what they’d accomplished. It was all very interesting. But if her father disapproved of her using deceased people to make medicine, then she knew he would never allow for her to make use of living people as ingredients and test subjects.

So she’d turned them down. The Supervisor had acted gracious when he allowed her to walk away, but she knew he wouldn’t give up. Case in point.

“Come now, you’ll never escape what you are,” Natsumi seemed to be getting irritated. He was never good with people. If there was one true commonality between all togabito, it seemed to be that they had little patience with other people. “You got trafficked a while back, he told me. Imagine what would have happened if they realized how different you were. If they thought to peel back that bandage on your arm-”

“They would see it as simply a flaw to be mourned,” Maomao informed him. “You all seem to think the rest of the world knows or cares about you a lot more than it really does,” he furrowed his brows and made to speak, so she interrupted him. “I don’t have any intention of indulging this for longer. Leave.”

Natsumi tilted his head, watching her carefully. “He’s having a kid, you know? A little girl. Figured you’d be interested in seeing how one would develop from birth, seeing as you were… granted yours. ”

What a pitiful existence that one will have. She almost shuddered to think of it.

“Not really. The guards will be upon you if I decide to start screaming.”

“As if they could ever hope to catch me,” he scoffed, but disappeared nonetheless.

For some reason, the man who headed Shiki was of the belief that Maomao and him were kindred spirits. Connected through the scars that they supposedly shared. He liked to prattle on about gods with multi-colored eyes. She’d had one conversation with him and that was quite enough.

So what if they were right? No one ever talked about them in such plain words, but the idea of people with unearthly, inhuman abilities wasn’t out of the question. She knew the ones she had specifically wouldn’t be treated kindly, even if they could heal or hurt in equal measure.

But she’d rather stay here in the Outer Court with easy access to her family and friends than rip it all away to stay in some clinical box, despite all the medical advancements it boasted.

So, so many medical advancements. She wondered how concentrated they could make willow bark extract-

No. Bad. She had principles to stick to.

The annoying thing about water was that even when it was drowning you, it couldn’t be considered poison. Maomao considered this with no small amount of bitterness as she wheezed loudly, trying to expel the river water that had gotten into her lungs.

Thankfully, Jinshi had looked away to examine the rest of the cave he had dragged them into, giving her the time to discreetly repurpose her sash to cover up the scar on her forearm.

While she tightened the ‘bandage’ over her arm, she found herself looking at the pool of water created by their dripping clothes. There were drops of blood mixed in with it. She hadn’t been hurt, but-

Her head whipped up to look at Jinshi, noting how his steps were barely concealing a heavy limp. “You were shot?”

The man took a moment to reply. “I’ll be fine.”

“Where.”

“Listen, it’s not a big deal-” he seemed to realize it was a lost cause and gave up before he embarrassed himself further. “One of the shots from the feifa got me in the shoulder. Other in the leg.”

“And you’re severely dehydrated and hungry on top of all that,” Maomao noted, looking through her pockets for something to offer him. The drink she had prepared was left on the riverbank and all she had were poisonous to normal people. “You’re in absolutely no condition to be walking around like this.”

“But I know the place better,” he argued, taking another step forward. “There’s an opening in the back, I’m pretty sure.”

Pretty sure. Brilliant odds.

She followed after him, watching the small trail of blood he left in his wake. This wasn’t good at all. How long did they have until things got dire?

Good news: an opening was found not long after. Bad news: it was a hole in the cave ceiling about five meters from the ground.

“I think I can lift you up there,” Jinshi finally decided, after staring at it for far too long, his eyes unable to focus.

“Please forgive me for having my doubts.”

It was clear Jinshi had to be treated right away. If the assassins came and he was still dead weight, she wouldn’t be able to defend him. And if he succumbed entirely to the ailments-

Her heart sunk.

Maomao would be implicated in the murder. That was the reason she didn’t want this. It was only self-interest that motivated this.

Jinshi weaved sharply, collapsing against a wall and breathing heavily. She jerked towards him, but he waved her off. “It’s… it’s fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”

She scrambled for solutions. Every road she considered came down to one conclusion.

There was no other way. She had to. If she didn’t, she might be executed. If she didn’t, Jinshi might die .

She stepped closer despite his protests. Put her hand on his shoulder, where he said the shot had gone in. Located the exact point of entry. He was completely still when she brought her head closer.

Sparse research told her that a bite would be more effective, but she didn’t want to make this more disturbing than it was. Behind the rush of fear and panic, she knew that this next part was going to be excruciating for him to comprehend.

Maomao brought her mouth over the wound and breathed heavily over it for several seconds. Long enough for her to feel the skin shifting and knitting itself together under her lips.

Now that it was no longer necessary, she backed off, wiping any blood or saliva off her mouth. “The- the one in you leg should soon follow,” she said, refusing to make eye contact. “You’re going to make it out of this.”

“Kusuriya, what-” Jinshi began to ask. Then, surprisingly, cut himself off. “It doesn’t matter. We still need to get out.”

Of course. Not right now, when his life still wasn’t in danger. He would likely bring down the hammer later.

“I feel better. Thanks to… whatever that was,” he decided, walking around to test his balance, then fixed his gaze on the hole in the ceiling. “I can lift you up there, I think. Once you’re out , you can go get help,” he crouched down slightly. “Come on, stand on my shoulders.”

She… didn’t really feel like that was appropriate for her station.

Als o, it was remarkable that he was willing to trust her with his life after what just happened.

But after some cajoling, she acquiesced.

It was a bad idea. An extremely bad idea. The dizziness caused by the combined blood loss and dehydration and hunger, as well as the slippery cave walls made them slip. And-

She had inadvertently gotten herself involved in a conspiracy she would rather not be in. No wonder he had dropped the subject before. Stupid of him to suggest this. Now she had leverage on him that she vehemently did not want.

“That was just a frog,” Maomao maintained, pulling herself up and quickly steering the conversation away. “I told you that you were in no condition to be even walking around, Jinshi-sama, let alone attempting this. Clearly you’re too dizzy to remain upright.”

“Uh. I mean- just- huh?” Jinshi looked a little taken aback. “You’re just going to ignore that?”

“I see no reason to do otherwise. Especially with what happened just before,” she pointed out.

I f they found out the truth about Jinshi ( which was what exactly? That he was faking it? Who knew, she certainly wasn’t eager to be in the know ) she would be pulled into it too, just by nature of being there. And if there was an investigation, they might realize that she might be balancing on a thin line of being something not quite human. It was simply self-interest to keep this between themselves.

Jinshi nodded, but looked a little unsure. She couldn’t care less. Lives were on the line and she needed to get out of this situation immediately.

Think. Think. They needed to call for help, but couldn’t risk yelling. What was some way…?

A bark not far away. A flash of inspiration.

The whistle!

That night, after all the chaos and dramatics had passed, Jinshi came to Maomao’s room, looking nervous. “I- uh- I feel like we need to talk,” he said with a reticence quite unlike him. “There’s some things I need to explain. And. Some things I feel like you need to explain.”

So they were doing this?

“I think we know as much of each others’ situation as is necessary,” Maomao reasoned. “This way we are not further aware of anything the other may or may not be doing. And we know we won’t involve other people, as both matters will stay between us. A pact of mutual destruction, if you will.”

“A pact of-” Jinshi seemed disturbed at the idea. “Do you think so little of me?”

“Not at all. I just think it’s what makes most sense in this situation,” she shrugged. After all, what other agreement were they supposed to reach?

She was a servant, her life was already at the behest of her employer’s whims. And if the truth came out about her near-miraculous powers of healing and disease…

It would no longer be just a whim that would lead to her execution. Surely Jinshi was in a position to understand. (Unless his was of a nature which did not mean his execution? No, no, this speculation was too dangerous to indulge even in her mind.)

Jinshi’s mouth set into a hard line, and he brought out a box. “I also intended for this to be an appeasement.”

Well, if he was offering. She peeked into the box. And her hair stood on end.

“Ox bezoar?!”

“Are you… going to eat it?” he asked, a beat of sweat on his forehead. “I’ve seen you do it with other medicinal ingredients, I just never thought it was for. Well. That reason.”

And just when they had made the agreement to not talk about it. She scowled at him and made sure to keep her voice low. “That only works with poison. Please never make mention of it ever again. I really do value my important work with poisons and medicine instead of just relying on cheap tricks.”

Then she turned around and slid the door shut, squealing over what she could make out of this precious ingredient. A bribe was thoroughly unnecessary, but she would accept it.